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Scrum changes trialled in Pacific Rugby Cup

The Pacific Rugby Cup will be used as a platform to trial changes in one of the game's fundamental aspects - the scrum.

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Fiji and Samoa's reserve rugby teams will use the Pacific Rugby Cup take part in a trial to change one of the most fundamental parts of the game - the scrum.

The International Rugby Board wants to test out a new style of player engagement in the Cup, which the board says is aimed at promoting player welfare.

Chairman of the IRB's Rugby Committee and former All Blacks Captain, Graham Mourie, told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat that there were difficulties with the scrum at the higher levels of the game.

"Safety is part of it, I think just the look of the game and the scrum collapses, the penalties, the resets of scrums which the IRB certainly at rugby committee and general level has felt it's just not good enough," he said.

In 2010 the IRB engaged the University of Bath to do a detailed analysis of scrums across the game, to find out exactly what physical forces were at work in scrums.

"We've got some pretty good information out of that which shows that since the game's gone professional, the amount of power, the force of the engagement has increased considerably," he said.

"We've also got some information from that which shows that the trial that we are going to undertake in the Pacific Rugby Championship actually reduces those forces and hopefully creates a more stable scrum."

Mr Mourie says officials have observed that the senior scrums "engage with some force from a distance", whereas the new trial scrum will see players touching and maintaining that position before they engage.

He says the information has shown about 25 per cent less force on engagement using the trial scrum.

Mr Mourie says there is "every possibility" that the new scrum rules will come into the highest levels of the game within the next 6 to 9 months, if the trial is successful.